Nurses, social workers, teachers, police, prison and probation officers in London, the south-east and east of England are being offered help under the 690m Key Worker Living programme announced by deputy prime minister John Prescott last week. To help employers recruit and retain staff, the new programme will offer workers equity loans of up to 50,000 towards the purchase of a home, higher level equity loans of up to 100,000 for some London school teachers who are leaders in their field, shared ownership of newly built properties and intermediate renting at subsidised rents.
The Key Worker Living scheme builds on the Starter Home Initiative launched in 2001, which the Government claimed has helped 9,000 workers acquire homes.
Unison national officer Bruni de La Motte said, 'We obviously welcome this scheme because it does help public sector workers. But as so often, nursery nurses, who do not capture the media limelight, have been forgotten, when they should be included and given help.
'Their wages are so low that they cannot get on the housing ladder. We recognise that there is a limited amount of money available and that the Government is prioritising higher-level professionals.
'But it must realise that we need a range of professionals and that includes nursery nurses and school support staff.' She added that as the idea of providing help with housing was relatively new, she hoped Unison could use the fact that the Government had targeted certain groups 'as a lever to get the scheme expanded'.
Tricia Pritchard, professional officer at the Professional Association of Nursery Nurses (PANN), said the Government's exclusion of nursery nurses and other childcare workers was at odds with its commitment to increase the workforce dramatically to implement the national childcare strategy. 'The main reasons given for the shortages of childcare staff in the south-east are the poor salaries and the cost of housing.
She added, 'The Government had a chance to put this right and unless it does, it will not be able to deliver the national childcare strategy.'
Mrs Pritchard said that most nursery nurses represented by PANN did not earn enough money 'to get on the first rung of the housing ladder', and added, 'Many of our members are having to do two or three jobs just to make ends meet.' She accused the Government of double standards for stressing the essential role of childcarers, while refusing to include them in the key workers scheme, which Mr Prescott had said was designed to keep the skills needed in frontline services.
